Free Tangled Passion by Stanley Ejingiri

fantasy-conquered mind. But she had listened to the man speak and for some reason, some strange reason, she believed him and wished her daughter trusted her.
    “She asked me to tell you not to worry; she said to let you know that she will send a message to you as soon as they arrive in the land of the freed slaves.” She remembered PaNene relating Ashana’s message to her.
    “But PaNene, what do you say? What do you think? Should I not worry?” she had asked the old man.
    “They will make it. I strongly believe in them; their spirits are strong and unbreakable. You must be strong and only pray for them as I do all the time,” PaNene had replied, fishing for the right words to calm and console the obviously troubled woman.
    Marecia nodded but it wasn’t a convincing nod. Pa could tell that he hadn’t done a very good job at convincing the woman. He watched her hands fold over her chest and her head fall so low that her chin was almost touching her chest.
    “What if they don’t?” she asked very calmly. It was a question the old man had asked himself a million times but had avoided the consideration of even the remotest possibility.
    “I have not thought about that because I have not considered the likelihood that they might not make it. Why waste my energy on something that is not true and worse still, bring bad luck on the innocent children?” he lied.
    She nodded once more, admitting to herself that it was a possibility that she would rather choose to not consider, just like the old man.
    “OK,” she said.
    “If they do exactly as I advised, which of course I am very sure they will, then there is no doubt that they’ll safely make it to their destination,” he assured her.
    There were still a million questions in Marecia’s head, floating like debris after an explosion, but she had chosen not to ask the old man any more but one last question. “Tomorrow morning….” she began and then paused.
    The old man knew what was meant to follow before her sudden pause. The discovery of the escape the following day and the event that would unfold following the discovery was something he had also chosen to avoid thinking about. He had resolved to deal with it when it happened. “Tomorrow will bring what it was destined to bring and we shall meet whatever it brings with faith and strength,” he said calmly.
    She nodded again and both went their separate ways. Marecia admired the old man’s faith in the young couple but nothing he’d said had done a good job of convincing her that escaping was a better option than what a relationship with the Massa’s son had to offer. The benefits were endless; the most important being that Ashana would not have to suffer what Marecia suffered as a young woman on so many hostile plantations—Ashana would be kept by one Massa and not become an object of first come first serve; servicing any Massa who got to her first.
    She’d be exempted from the strenuous job of the plantation or any other form of hard work and all of Marecia’s fear of being separated from her daughter would be laid to rest. These were benefits that most slave girls dreamed of; something her own daughter had decided to turn down without due consideration, Marecia thought.
    “I showed them a different route,” Marecia remembered PaNene telling her. “A route that is known to me alone—every other person who knew about it has passed on.” Marecia nodded but she couldn’t figure out why the old man was so calm and so confident. What if the others who knew about the route had told other people about it before they died? What if the Massa had gotten wind of it? She wanted to ask him but had restrained herself.
    “The route will lead them to safety and as long as they follow my directions diligently, they will eventually arrive at a place where they’ll be picked up and brought to the island where freed slaves live freely with their former Massas.”
    “Who will pick them up?” she asked. She had heard